An extra 40 cents a day.

Obviously the big news of yesterday and today is Transportation Commissioner Martin Crilly’s report on Translink’s 10-year plan. I’m not going to get a chance to look at it in any detail until the weekend, but I want to flag one quick thing now about the bump in fares. Via Matt Kieltyka at the Hook, I see that the fare hikes Crilly approved have a very particular structure. Monthly passes and faresaver tickets are going to get more expensive, but cash fares will stay where they are. In other words, what little discount people get when they buy passes or tickets is going to get decreased or eliminated.

I haven’t looked at the report, so I don’t know what Crilly’s reasoning is, but that seems like possibly a shrewd move. At the margin, is the behaviour of pass-buyers less responsive to fare increases than the behaviour of people who pay their fares in cash? Maybe because pass-buyers — like me — are already heavily invested in taking transit? Or would that effect be offset by pass-buyers, at the margin, responding to fare increases by giving up their passes and finding cars to drive? Anyway, I know what my weekend reading’s going to be.